Ami Flynn

Name: Ami Flynn

Gender: Female

Age: 17

Grade: 12th

School: Aurora High School

Hobbies and Interests: Mathematics, Old Poetry and Classical Music

Appearance: The one thing that sets Ami apart from her peers is her height. Standing at five-feet, eight-inches, Ami is more tall than she is wide. Weight has never been a problem for her; currently Ami is at 128 lbs. Her tall stature is something that causes her plenty of fret, and she slouches her shoulders whenever possible to lower her an inch or so. Her black hair is cut straight down to her shoulders, with blunt bangs running along the length of her forehead and hovering just above her small curved eyebrows.

The features on her face are soft, with puffy cheeks, small button nose and a smooth forehead. Her hazel eyes are round with small irises and wide pupils. With her lips normally curved into a frown, Ami gives off this confused, almost thoughtful look. Her whole head is sculpted into a heart shape, wide at the temples and narrowing into a small delicate chin. She has no freckles or moles on her face, but she does have frequent acne breakouts. Most of it is congregated around the forehead, so she does well to cover it all up with her bangs.

Her skin has a naturally snowy complexion, so any makeup that she does put on is done in moderation, though the most she regularly uses are mascara and eyeliner. Her body is slim and her arms and legs are lanky.

Ami's clothing choices come off as pretty preppy but are casual for the most part. The day of the trip was no exception. She was brave enough to bring her favorite pale green cardigan over a white oxford shirt, collar buttons unfastened. Ami also wore a brown skirt that reached down to the middle of her thighs and a pair of bright sandals that seem to clash with the whole ensemble. She has a pair of sneakers and shoes tucked into her bag but neglected from wearing them on the first run on the trip.

Biography: Ami Flynn was born in Seattle on a cold morning in December, the 19th of 1994. Ami’s ethnicity is muddled. Her father, Jeremy Flynn, is strictly Irish American, with his family having been in the state of Washington since the turn of the 20th-century. Her mother, Tamara, comes from a line of Ukrainian immigrants who migrated years before the Soviet Union dissolved. However, while Tamara’s father was Ukrainian, her mother was Filipino. This has left Ami as a bit of a mutt but it does not appear to bother her. This also means that Ami’s family is extended, but with conflicting nationalities it is also very strained. Ami keeps mostly in contact with her father’s side while she rarely hears from either side of her mother’s family.

Ami had a nickname in elementary and middle school: Graveyard Amy. Even to this day Ami is not certain of when the nickname sprouted, or who gave it to her. It definitely had something to do with the fact that she grew up in a funeral home. It didn't make much sense to her as a child, as the actual graveyard was about a mile or so away from her house. Oddly enough, the nickname did not bring teasing and harassment as so many silly schoolhouse nicknames often do. It did quite the opposite. Some classmates appeared generally interested in her, asking her whether she’s seen any ghosts or whether she had trouble sleeping. Others avoided her completely, not wanting to risk any curses being brought upon them if they hung around too long.

Ami hated the nickname at first but she eventually warmed up to it. What she did not warm up to was the idea that the Funeral Home was the only notable thing about her. No matter where her interests led her, where she put her focus on or what friends she tried to make, it always seemed to come full circle and back to the Flynn Funeral Home. This really bothered Ami as a child, but recently she has come to understand that it is only expected.

Nestled in a quiet tree-lined street in Seattle, only a few streets down from Aurora High School, the Flynn Funeral Home sticks out amongst the many houses it is situated between. It is a very tall, very old building, created around the turn of the 20th-century but renovated several times over the years. What was originally meant to be a home for the entire family changed during the Great Depression. The name Flynn Mortuary became the Flynn Funeral Parlor in the 70’s, then finally settled on the Flynn Funeral Home around when Ami was born. It has been run by several generations of family members, making it a fixture in the community.

The funeral home is operated by Ami's father. He handles the financial side of things, speaks to the families who come visit and oversees everything. Ami's uncle Dillon handles the embalming in the basement of the home. Dillon does not live with Ami's family but she sees him almost every day. Her mother plays little part in the business; she works as a regional manager for Amtrak.

Ami gets along very well with her parents, even though she doesn't get to spend as much time with them as she wants. She feels much more closer to her father and uncle than her mother. Tam does not come home until the late evening and her father works from home so it makes perfect sense. Ami does not spend much quality time with her father but she admires him immensely. Her interest in classical music stems from her father; he played music in his office while we did the mountains of paperwork. It was an earworm that immediately hooked, and while she had little interest in learning how to play, she became intrigued. Ami is a fan of the Romantic period, with an intense love for Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Chopin.

Ami has been very close to death for most of her childhood but contrary to popular belief, she has lived a fairly uninteresting life. Living in a funeral home has not put a morbid spin on her life. If anything, it's just made Ami more aware of death, even somewhat comfortable with it. She always looks at the dead strangers being brought into her home and she only sees them as temporary guests. Her father, mother and uncle always treat them with respect, so there was no reason why it should be scary.

The business of dealing with the dead has permeated her daily life. Death is not such a big deal. The clichés about death are true, no doubt about that. Everyone has to take their turn. Nothing can change that. Ami is not one for brooding or worrying. While in the habit of over-analyzing problems, it's more likely for her to be worried about getting rid of the pimples forming on her forehead than the looming threat of death.

Ami's parents drove home the idea of studying hard, getting good grades and finding a good job, but there is very little bonding time. The funeral business is a twenty-four hour commitment, and while Ami saw her father often Ami was otherwise left to her own devices. This was perfectly fine to her. Ami was a good kid, and she loved her parents. Ami didn't have any problem making friends. It wasn't unusual for her to just head to someone else's house until it was time for dinner.

There are rules to living in a Funeral Home. Ami would have to go upstairs to her room whenever a family came to the house, and she would have to be quiet. Ami never minded this quiet time. She had a computer in her room, and she would spend hours on there making little games for her amusement. When she was old enough, Tam gave Ami her father's collection of poetry books. Ami quickly took a liking to them. Many of them were in Ukrainian but the ones that were translated were beautiful. She keeps these books very close to her, and she is very careful with them.

Elementary and middle school were all a blur for her. Ami was a gifted in all of her classes, especially in math and rhetoric, so the work proved little challenge. Ami skipped the fifth grade entirely and moved on to middle school at the age of ten. This brought along difficulties, not academically but socially. None of Ami's friends went to her new middle school. Even though she was about one year younger than her classmates, she had trouble fitting in. This social disconnect has all but dissolved now that she is in high school, though there are times where she still frets much more than she should.

In terms of High School, Ami still does extremely well. She makes full use of the AP classes, and gets mostly As, with a few Bs here and therein her PE classes and one AP Physics class that proved harder than she imagined. She does very well under pressure and she tends to let assignments sit until the last minute. This has given her the habit of procrastinating, but she always pulls through in the end. Ami feels more worried about her friends than she does with her schoolwork. She makes friends fairly easily nowadays, the normal types who don't get into any trouble. It is perfectly normal for a teenager to overthink the subject of "making friends" and Ami is no exception. Her friends think that she is cool, but considering that she sees herself as rather plain and boring, she can't very well accept that at face value.

Math is the subject that she enjoys the most because it's the subject that she finds genuine joy in acing. She passed her AP Calculus I class with plenty of finesse. It's not just solving her homework either. There's this smug joy she feels whenever a friend asks her for help with their homework, though she would never openly admit to this.

Her worst subject by far is PE. Ami is not an athletic child, never has been and never will be. It does not take much to tire Ami out. She finds the whole class a chore to sit through and she finds no joy in it. Ami does not participate in any clubs. She never took an interest in any of them, and the friends that she made did not attend any clubs either. Ami put most of her energy into getting high grades and so far it has paid off for her. Ami wants to become a Mathematician. There is very little stopping her, considering her grades. Ami has received Acceptance letters from both Brown and Princeton. Only recently has she decided on going with the latter, thanks to the things she's heard from countless people attending there. Ami has no intention on taking over her father's business. She was afraid her father might expect her to, but thankfully her parents wants what's best for her.

Ami is a very logical person, driven on rationality and thinking from multiple angles. Her love of math, specifically Calculus and Statistics, She rarely jumps to conclusions, though she has the habit of over-thinking things, especially when involved with her friends and the other kids in her school. This is nothing unusual for a girl her age. Ami is a normal girl after all. She's just been a little closer to death than most.

Advantages: Ami is a calm, intelligent person. She's driven on logic and she does her best work when under pressure. Her knack for thinking will help her come up with unique ways to solve problems..

Disadvantages: Ami has no strength to speak of, she has no endurance and she can't run for more than thirty seconds. Ami’s decision-making process is less comfortable going with gut instinct, especially when logic eventually fails her. Ami is also more likely to put her trust in and to side with her friends than going against them.

Designated Number: Female student No. 072

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Designated Weapon: Stinger 30-06

Conclusion: Strength? My friend, with a draw like that, you don't need strength. I've yet to see muscles that could take bullets. Be rational, be cool, and you're gonna realise exactly what you need to do to go home. - Elias Östberg

'The above biography is as written by Ciel. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Ciel

Kills:  Sara Corlett, Maynard Francis Hurst, Joachim Lovelace, Ruby Forrester

Killed By: Sean Mulcahy

Collected Weapons: Stinger 30-06 (designated weapon), Scalpel (found in Hospital),  Ingram MAC-10 (from Katarina Konipaski, to Juhan Levandi ), Beretta 39R machine pistol (from Maynard Francis Hurst), Ballistic Knife (from Joachim Lovelace), Colt Python Revolver (from Paris Ardennes)

Allies: Ruby Forrester, Sean Mulcahy, Sara Corlett, Mirabella Strong, Deanna Hull

Enemies: Sean Mulcahy, Hansel Williams, Katarina Konipaski, Mirabella Strong, Juhan Levandi

Mid-game Evaluation:

Post-Game Evaluation:

Memorable Quotes:

Threads
Below is a list of threads that contain Ami, in chronological order.

The Past:


 * Twice Shy
 * Viices

Pre-Game:
 * Shevchenko's Last Poem

V5: Related Threads in Meanwhile:
 * Ultimately We Just Want to Be Happy
 * Check Out My New Weapon, Weapon of Choice
 * Good Day Sunshine
 * Friends 'til the end
 * On the edge
 * Tell No Tales
 * Prayer for the Someone Who Is Somewhere Dying
 * Litany Against Fear
 * Two Opponents
 * Lucifer Fell
 * The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. One
 * A Manic Depressive Named Laughing Boy
 * Disneyland's Blue Bayou Restaurant (Call Off Your Ghost)
 * The Secret Fate of All Life
 * Layabout
 * Awaiting Fate
 * All at Once, the Consequences;
 * Love and Marriage
 * Ocean Breathes Salty

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Ami Flynn. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''

Ami Flynn is a look into what happens when you you give reader anything to work with. I realized this about halfway through the game, post Prayer for the Someone, and it left me somewhat lost and unsure of her direction. After rereading her, the point has been underlined, highlighted and scribbled in those little 'ta-da' lines. But it's also given me a bit of clarity.

Ami is nothing like my previous kids. To me, every character is like a jigsaw puzzle where I go and replace one of the pieces with my own. That frame of mind has always worked for me But Ami was a step out of my comfort zone -- from the start she was meant for big things. That mindset's all well and good; many great characters rode on the talons of that same flag. But I think I got... attached? It's, like, over time, it became less about what I wanted and more about the best 'choice'. Soon I was aiming for some vague sense of acceptance because I was desperately trying to convince myself that the Jenga Tower I built for myself wasn't about to fall, oh no, it's fine, it's not about to topple, what are you even talking about. That might sound like melodramatic pity party central but therein lies the problem. Don't get high off of your own supply.

It's not all negative. Some of my best work has come from her, some stuff I'm really proud about. And people have shown tons of support over the past year and I really appreciate that... but at the end of the day, she's a character with a vague personality and no 'soul'. And that bugs me. There are slices of her character that have made quite a few people scratch their heads, with good reason. What bothers me most is that a lot of it's intentional. If someone came up to me, pointed and said 'this part is confusing', 9/10 I'd be able and all too willing to explain but... I get nervous and even a tad guilty whenever I do that that. Not only because I tend to rattle on (there's a lot) but, like, doesn't explaining Ami's bullshit defeat the purpose of said bullshit? Shouldn't the reader be able to intuit these things from a cold reading? Will reading this character turn into one of those awkward social situations where I tell a joke that you don't laugh at, so I explain what's funny, you shrug, then I shuffle my feet and mumble 'guess you had to be there'? I don't know. If people want I might go into a bit more detail. I can't help seeing her as all icing and no cake.

I have no idea what my opinion on Flynn is. She's okay, I guess, but my lenses are still rose-tinted. Maybe once the V5 readathon comes around there might be a definitive answer. I wouldn't change a thing though #yolo #sns - Ciel